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Matt Slick defends “honor killing”: a woman’s hymen is worth more than her life

By way of introduction, some of you will remember Matt Dillahunty’s on-air debate with apologist Matt Slick of the CARM website, which was recorded on February 22, 2009. If you missed it, here you go. Keep in mind this is the first of nine parts.

Recently one of our viewers emailed us about a rather alarming article by Slick on the CARM site that stands as an exemplar of just how religion’s confused notions of what constitutes “morality” has led religion to be the foremost enabler of atrocity in history. In brief, when Christians insist that morality itself is impossible without Christianity, and atheists reply by rattling off endless examples both from scripture and real life of the devout behaving badly, the spin machine kicks into gear so fast you can practically see the Higgs boson particles zinging off it in all directions. Justify, justify, justify, is the order of the day.

Here, Slick justifies what may be one of the most appalling crimes there is: the “honor killing” of daughters (yes, it’s always daughters) who are not acceptably virginal in the eyes of their fathers and grooms. In this context, “father” and “groom” is a term interchangeable with “owner.”

Slick begins by quoting a lengthy passage from Deuteronomy in which God’s laws for dealing with an insufficiently chaste bride are detailed. The passage first declares that any groom who is caught trying to weasel out of his marriage by lying that his bride was not a virgin will be fined 100 shekels and then forbidden from ever divorcing his wife as long as he lives (which I imagine is considered the worse punishment). On the other hand, if it turns out that the bride was indeed not a virgin at her nuptials, then the skanky ho is to be taken out and stoned to death.

To attempt to defend a practice so primitive, inhumane and frankly monstrous, one would, you’d think, have to be not only an idiot, but someone plumbing hitherto unexamined depths of idiocy just to see how far he could go before imploding into something like a black hole of idiocy so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape. Well, folks, we have that intrepid explorer right here. Step right up, Mr. Slick.

When you got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose, and so Slick leads with his worst punch.

Critics of the Bible must be careful not to impose their present day moral system upon that of an ancient culture found in Scripture and then judge Scripture as though it is inferior to their own subjective morality. The above verses were written 3,000 years ago in a very different culture and location.

Uhhh…yeah. Let’s see, how do I explain this to someone so intellectually impacted?

What is at issue here is the notion of treating a human being as property, denied any sense of personal agency. By slipping in that favorite of all apologetic weasel phrases, “subjective morality,” Slick doubtless believes he’s scored a home run right out of the dugout, when in fact it’s a pop fly. If anyone here is exhibiting “subjective” morality, it’s Slick, making the above quote one of the most awesome irony-meter-melting sentences you’re likely to read from an apologetics source.

Slick appears to accept that our moral precepts are different from those of 3000 years ago. Thus he suggests that while we may be right to be appalled at savage acts of cruelty towards young women in 2011 CE, we have no reason to be appalled by the same acts in 989 BCE. (Yeah, I used a calculator.) I guess time heals all wounds, eh? And yet, Slick gives us no reason why we should suspend our “subjective” morality in this way. Beyond basically saying “This is how they rolled back then,” we are given no valid moral justification (hell, I’d have even taken a mildly coherent one) for why we should think misogynist brutality is A-okay as long as it happened long long ago.

Moreover, is there a statute of limitations (maybe in the fine print at the bottom of the decalogue tablets) for this kind of thing? Is there a cutoff period where my “subjective” morality just becomes straight-up morality and it’s okay for me to call an atrocity an atrocity? Can I just look at American slavery and say, “Well, I must must be careful not to impose my present day moral system on the culture of 160 years ago.” Or is it too soon?

Let us briefly consider what is involved in stoning someone to death.

Matt Frauenfelder at Boing Boing (too many Matts in this piece, I must say) has helpfully provided us with an illustrated guide. This graphic shows how they do it in the Muslim world, which is the only contemporary culture I know of still goat-fucking barbaric enough to pull this crap. The details might have been different when the ancient Jews did it, but I suspect the results were the same: a dead girl.

First the victim is partially buried standing up, because it’s no fun if the stonee is running around frantically for her life. You might miss and hit your mom or something. Then, the actual process of killing the victim can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours, depending on, I don’t know, whether the victim’s skull is especially thick, or whether the stones are nice and hard or soft and crumbly, or maybe it’s just a matter of how goddamned sadistic the killers are feeling that day.

Imagine being in the pit. You can see nothing, but you hear the deafening roar of the crowd’s bloodlust. Your pulse is hammering, and you have probably already shit yourself in blind terror. Then, after what seems like an agonizing eternity, the first rock clips you. Maybe it hurts like a bastard, but wasn’t hard enough to kill you. (In Islamist countries, there is in fact a law that the rocks used cannot be so heavy and large as to kill with the first blow. Not nice spoiling everyone’s fun.) But after the explosion of pain, you start feeling light-headed, dizzy. A few more blows, and you go into shock. Your vital signs plunge, your whole body begins to feel cold, and if you haven’t shit yourself already, now you do. You slip out of consciousness. If you’re lucky, you’ll die very soon after this.

I suspect this is as terrifying and brutal a way to die 3000 years ago as it is today. I see no reason to think a young girl experiencing the above back in the distant past would have felt any less horror, agony and despair than her modern-day counterpart. So why is Slick telling me that it’s okay to be appalled by modern-day stonings, but that I’m out of line for being appalled by 3000-year-old stonings? Is there some “moral absolute” at play that I’m just not Christian enough to get here?

Anyway, let your imagination run with all this as you continue to read Slick’s apologia. Remember the above is what he’s defending.

Sexual purity was very highly valued, unlike today, and when a man would marry a woman, her virginity was critical. In ancient times a dowry was paid to the father of the bride and the rightful expectation was that the bride would be a virgin.

So there, you see? She’s his property, so that makes it okay. And notice the snide aside about “sexual purity [being] highly valued, unlike today.” Yeah, because we all know a woman’s hymen is of more value to her male owner than her fucking life. There’s your religious “morality,” gang.

When you’re in a hole, stop digging, unless you’re a Christian apologist. Slick goes on yet some more, reiterating that really, it’s just all about teh mehnz.

In the culture of the time it was the father who was charged with the covering, care, and well-being of his daughter. Her sexual purity was representative of the father’s ability to raise her according to the laws God. Therefore, in that culture, a man’s reputation, as well as the family’s reputation in the community, could be adversely affected by the fornication of his daughter. If his daughter had been promised to a man to be married, and a dowry had been paid, there was every expectation from the bridegroom that she would be a virgin. If the contrary was discovered after the marriage, then the implication is that there had been a deception in which the father could be implicated, or it would mean that he was unaware of her sin and this would bring great shame to the family and the community, not to mention it being a display of outright rebellion against God’s law. In this case, to insure the integrity of the family, and to remove the evil of adulterous/fornication from the community, stoning was advocated.

Again with the “in that culture” business. Here is why Matt Slick is a moral imbecile: S.F.W. if this activity was the norm “in that culture”; does Slick think it’s right or wrong to do this to another human being, period? Especially — especially — for reasons as pitifully selfish and banal as your own “shame.” Slick steadfastly avoids passing any moral judgment upon the killing, while telling “critics of the Bible” they are in no position to pass a moral judgment either, which is itself a moral judgment. Somehow, you can’t condemn death by stoning (if it’s ancient and Biblical, that is, because something tells me Slick would flip-flop in a picosecond when presented with the spectacle of modern-day Islamist stonings), but you can condemn those who’d condemn it, on the ground that they are somehow applying “subjective” moral standards.

So what is the Godly “moral absolute” on this issue then, Mr. Slick? Can young women be treated as chattel by their fathers and husbands, or not? Can they be murdered for making men embarrassed about their pee-pees, or not? If a “morally subjective” approach is the wrong way to think about all this, then clearly a “morally absolute” approach is the right way. So what does the absolute moral lawgiver have to say, Mr. Slick? Is he pissed off that we no longer stone our women to death? If his morals are absolute, shouldn’t this still be common practice today?

I think I’ve said enough. If any article demonstrates better than this one how badly religion can screw up a human being’s fundamental sense of right and wrong, I’ve managed to miss it. Religion, far from providing anything like morality, simply sets a list of arbitrary rules that allow any number of vile acts to be visited upon the helpless, and it is all elaborately justified with feeble rhetoric later. Secular morality may not be perfect either, but it is immeasurably stronger for being rooted in basic human empathy and reason. Not only do I not need a God to tell me that “honor killings” are a horrible evil, but it appears that people who do have a God don’t think it’s all that evil after all. Lord, protect me from your followers!

I used to interact with Slick on CARM, probably 15 years ago. I was active on the creationist board there, along with Penny Fryman, who ended up marrying a prominent creationist (I forget which one — Faulkner?).

Clearly, any man who wants to call himself an honest or decent man, accepts that women’s hymens are merely symbols of the oppression of the much wider, much more important open dialogue of women’s relationships, and women’s power with other women.

In other words, the vagina itself is a sort of opening, a mouthpiece and a memory for every relationship that woman has had, and holds dear,and any man who does not understand that cannot love a woman, until he can talk to her vagina about whaty is on her mind.

The hymen is a unique strange cultural symbol–a throwback to an even stranger era when men would actually expect, or believe in having intimacy with a woman that was special, or private, and not one of socially constructed ‘norms’ of group behavior in relation to vagina’s; and the interwoven, enmeshed relationships they speak for.

Hymen worship is such a disrespectful symbol as well, of the negation of women’s relationships with their mothers who raised them to be more valuable, useful members of a society. And in that regards, the hymen becomes it’s own burden–a voice crying out in the darkness, and pleading for liberation from patriarchy, and stolen from a girls caring mother.

I am appalled at how men fetishize the possibility of private, intimate dialogue with a woman or women that they claim to love, or want to know. Any woman can tell you that her unique voice begins with her virginity, and every word thereafter.

Wait a minute! A man who argued that morality is a timeless, transcendent, unquestionable concept invented handed down to us “corrupted” beings by a being that is supposed to the ultimate good is now invoking the “moral relativism” that he and his fellow Christards have spent decades attacking in order to whitewash the inherent sexism and cruelty of his religion?

I’m not surprised or shocked. I just take umbrage at the bold-faced hypocrisy of it all. I guess morality is absolute, even when his god changes the rules.

That closing remark is yet one more example of how completely adrift Slick is. First he goes into a long explanation of how a young girl’s virginity was highly prized by both her father and suitor, and how, if she squandered this prize (because it’s not like her body is something she has any control over), she merited death. Then he does a quick flip-flop at the end and whips out the whole dishonest “it’s not the sex, it’s the lying” line that conservatives slammed Bill Clinton with. As if it’s entirely reasonable for “lying to daddy” to be a capital crime too.

If your response to the very idea of honor killings is anything other than automatic, unequivocal condemnation, then frankly, you’re what’s wrong with the human race.

And while the killings themselves may no longer occur in the west, the misogyny underlying their justification — that a woman’s entire worth as a human being is based solely upon (and is inversely proportional to) her level of sexual experience — is still very much alive among conservative Christians.

Wait a minute! A man who argued that morality is a timeless, transcendent, unquestionable concept invented handed down to us “corrupted” beings by a being that is supposed to the ultimate good is now invoking the “moral relativism” that he and his fellow Christards have spent decades attacking in order to whitewash the inherent sexism and cruelty of his religion?

There’s no reason to expect anyone who jumps from one of the abstract, so-called “sophisticated” arguments for God to “this particular God, who wants this and that” to be consistent…

These types of arguments are rarely used by deists or non-specific theists, but usually theists who believe in a very specific God. If they claim to be following the logic of their argument (which is usually flawed, most commonly by making unwarranted assumptions or changing the meaning of terms mid-argument), then they should realize that the argument makes their God no more likely than any other possible God.

Just to add my own little musings…
It’s funny how it’s always the woman’s purity which is called into question and never the man’s. With the hundred of ways a hymen can break without intercourse, an equal opportunity god would have a similar punishment for men who did not remain pure. But of course being made from a rib means you are half a person. If god would have used a more suitable part to create a woman from, like a penis, perhaps his creations would have treated her as a person.

Yea, I was going to mention that as well. A good portion of girls tear their hymens in other ways. (Not sure the numbers, not gonna look it up.) Even without sleeping with another man, these girls would be considered non-virgins and killed for it.

Matt, great article. But you said “If any article demonstrates better than this one how badly religion can screw up a human being’s fundamental sense of right and wrong, I’ve managed to miss it.” There is a worse one, William Lane Craig’s defense of infanticide:
“… if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.”
No beating around the bush here (and no reflection on how this same person can also be against abortion).

Or as Stephen Fry put in the Hitchen/Fry debate with an African Bishop and a Catholic British MP on whether the Catholic Church is a force for good, “what good are you for if your morality is informed by the context of the society you live in ?”

I’m not Matt. Shocking as it may seem, there is more than one person associated with The Atheist Experience.

Actually, I do recall reading some idiocy from Craig in which he asked readers to sympathize with the horror all those poor Israelite soldiers had to endure as they were reluctantly slaughtering Amalekite babies. So yeah, that’s probably the worst.

That’s another little bit of absurdity from Christian mythology. God was able to wish the universe into existence from nothingness. But in order to create one more thing — women — he needed to borrow a rib.

It’s easy to wonder how anyone who literally believes this stuff could be sufficiently intelligent to perform daily tasks.

Pleasse don’t think I’m defending Craig, but he may just be asserting the Xtian commonplace that the death of a sufficiently young, baptized child is not an evil to the child (as opposed to an evil action by a child-killer). It’s hard to tell outside of a context for the quote. On the other hand, unless he rejects the notion of a limbus infantium (as other Calvinists seem to do), he tacitly asserts that baptism is not required in order to send these kids to his heaven; the logical consequence is that abortion is a sacrament, and that children born alive should be drowned forthwith.

Reading Martin Wagner’s comment leads me to think that Craig is even nuttier than the Wikipedia summary would suggest.

People like Slick are so wedded to the idea of “absolute morality”, they don’t seem to see any contradiction or irony in suggesting absolute morality changed. They always give lame excuses like “Jesus changed it” or “Certain laws were only civil laws”, or a couple others I can’t remember because they make no more sense than those two (and even those two are not consistent with their overall argument advocating absolute morality, nor the text of the bible).

One argument against “absolute morality” that I think was touched on in a recent AETV episode was that morality is messy, and situations in reality can arise where none of the possible choices could be called “moral”. If such situations can exist (and they can and do), then morality cannot be absolute. Things that are “absolute” cannot inherently contradict other things that are absolute.

For example, if there is one absolute moral decision in any given situation, then that moral decision shouldn’t change with the context. The example I like to use with Christians is this: say you are a Scoutmaster, and while in the woods, the kids under your charge are all stung by a swarm of bees. Now say two of those kids start going into anaphylactic shock…and you have only ONE epipen for beestings in your firstaid kit (let’s say neither kid knew they were allergic so didn’t have epipens of their own–not an entirely outlandish situation if everyone was stung).

Is it “absolutely moral” to save child A, or child B? Usually Christians say it doesn’t matter which one, …but those are two DIFFERENT choices. If there is only ONE absolutely moral thing to do, then it can’t be a “do either this or that” situation. Moreover, from the subjective point of view of child A (or child B) it REALLY REALLY MATTERS (this isn’t a situation where you can just shrug and say “whatever”).

But if morals are absolute, then changing the circumstances relative (and subjective) to the choice shouldn’t matter. But they DO matter. What if child A pulls an epipen of his own out of his pocket? Clearly the moral thing to do is administer the epipen from the first aid kit to child B–you DON’T randomly choose between the two (the choice that the Christian apologist often says is the “absolute moral choice” just seconds before).

Or imagine by the time you get to the two kids, one is dead. The moral choice then becomes crystal clear RELATIVE to the situation at hand–NOT based on some “absolute morality”. (Again, you don’t randomly choose between the two kids–you administer the epipen RELATIVE to the kid who is still alive and still needs it!)

Ironically, modernity, medical science, etc, has minimized the situations in which would would be faced with immediate and agonizing moral dilemmas, and so in the minds of some these moral dilemmas don’t exist…which falls right in line with their preconceived notions of absolute morality. This kind of magical thinking might also explain why people like Slick say that morals “3000 years ago” were absolute, even though they are different than absolute morals today…and not bat an eye. They’re looking back through history from a privledged place, and implicitly or explicitly attributing our well being (with few moral dilemmas to wrestle with) to god or god’s absolute morality, and ignoring science altogether…or attributing that to god also! lol There’s just no reasoning with that view.

I try hard to be a good person. I try hard to understand other points of view. I really try to embrace the idea that violence is completely unnecessary in most cases.

And people like Slick raise issues that make it hard for me to cling to these ideals. I became a father just about two years ago to a beautiful little girl. I want to protect her as well as I can.

Sadly, as far as I can tell, in order to protect her I’ll need to be a savage brute. Basically, I will need to beat the hell out of people like Slick if they even so much as glance at her. This little piece is shocking. One of the most disgusting acts I can imagine, the killing of one’s own daughter for the simple fact that she was human and had sex before marriage.

That is very likely why he feels it is less evil(he may even have made that point explicitly), but the point is he is rationalizing something immoral and no amount of context or justification makes it moral here. Just because he might believe infants go to heaven doesn’t man you should say, oh well, in THAT case yeah I guess it’s not as bad. His whole outlook is immoral.

Actually, there is a theory of some sort that the rib that Eve was supposedly made out of was actually the baculum (aka “penis bone”). This leads to explaining why human males lack this bone which most other male mammals have.

The accusations of “moral relativism” have always been what one can consider to be a “Big Lie”, that is, accuse your opponents of what you yourself are guilty of in order to get the attention away from you.

Dr D E Cameron (retired) -honestly your post is so fucking weird I strongly suggest you stop your ridiculous theorising about talking to vaginas. It isn’t a fucking magic vessel you know, also not everything that’s been in it has been “held dear”. God I hate your sort of crap.

Ok I’m really confused about this thing called objective morality. Isn’t it morality that is inherently true, thus true for all of time. If stoning was part of gods objective morality it should be moral today. On the other hand if Slick says that we can’t judge stoning by today’s standards I would assume he is saying we can override this rule because we know better today.So why can’t we throw out all the other crap in the bible and does anybody have a list of these objective morals?

I wish I could take that response as a strawman…. but I cannot because I grew up with people that seemed to think that. Not my parents, thank something. I would rather not say God in this context.

And this is why, if my child decides she wants to experiment with Church(I live in Texas, it is possible that she will be influenced by some peers and want to go), that I will be going with her. I think not allowing her to go is a mistake. And not going with her would be even worse, if she gets sucked into a place with these kind of degenerates.

Sometimes they say “absolute” and sometimes they say “objective”, but they are both in the same realm of discussion.

The problem as I see it is that morality simply has no meaning if it isn’t RELATIVE (ie not absolute) to SOME “in group”. Another way to put it is to say it is subjective to “our group”, not objective to all of reality. The universe doesn’t care if we all die tomorrow–as Harlan Ellison said, it’s just “boogie-in’ along doin’ its thing” and doesn’t know, or care, if you live or die.

I would rather make that In Group humanity itself (as I see it demonstrated that I have the best chance to be healthy, happy, and survive in the largest pool of functioning humans as possible), and can’t imagine a morality any human being would accept that DIDN’T include some conception of behaviors that lead to some perceived good in SOME group of humans (large or small).

The question is…is the perceived good actually good? Does it lead to ACTUAL outcomes that are desirable for the “in group”? These are the questions that make life interesting…and messy…and also illustrate morality is not objective or absolute.

It is relative and subjective to US. And then we get to define who we are as individuals and as a people. If we can do that rationally, in ways that are equitable and just and functional in demonstrable reality, we can grow as a species over time as we learn about ourselves and the universe around us. If not, and we undermine our own existence, the universe still won’t care and our dysfunction or extinction will be remembered by no one, condemned by no one, and we will have learned nothing.

I think I would agree with WLC that our lives as humans would be objectively meaningless, at least insofar as the extinction of the species is concerned. But our lives are not SUBJECTIVELY meaningless as long as we are alive as individuals, or the species is alive as a whole. And since our individual lives directly impact the well being of the species into an unforeseen future, the meaning of our individual lives–even after our individual deaths–carries on in our posterity. That “meaning” may not be as personal as we would wish, but it is very real–just not “absolute” or “objective”…but close enough for many nonbelievers, and close enough for believers to confuse with Absolute and Objective.

This again reminds me of an animal looking in a mirror and thinking it sees another animal. The believers are looking into themselves for morality, and seeing “God” and his Objective, Absolute morals…never realizing their mistake. There ain’t no god in that mirror!

Hell, that it always survives to first intercourse is only the second layer of the myth. The first layer is that it’s even reliably there in the first place. The extent of the membrane is widely variable. Many girls aren’t even born with anything that’d be read as an “intact hymen.”

Oh My. I am certain my meaning has been misconstrued. And I must warn the young lady up there that it is dangerous to put popcorn in your vagina.And to that other woman, I did not mean to imply that vaginas can talk–they cannot, per se, although in my days in Cu Chi, Viet Nam, I had indeed heard some raucous stories about talking vaginas from the young boots.

I was attempting a metaphor, of finding ‘voice.’.

Oh, my I have mis-spoken. What I was trying to say is that the vagina is the voice of the world–the opening of Platos metaphorical cave, or Even Ensler’s huge, world wide dialogue, the “Vagina Monoliths.”

In regard to Deuteronomy, certainly “In the culture of the time it was the father who was charged with the covering, care, and well-being of his daughter.”

And of course, by extrapolation, any truly modern society must forego patriarchy in its entirety, thus it is crucial that fathers be made to understand the communal nature of all women–that women, at once individual, are voiceless until they are united as a social force, lending voice for women’s causes–women are the property of all women, and certainly share something that men cannot ever understand.

Of course, in a modern society, a fathers input is essentially damaging to any and all girls, because men are not capable of comprehending the vaginal voice ( for lack of a better phrase, I use the anatomical for now). And I am trying to wrap myself around the modern horrors and suffering of women and their vaginas–certainly women’s choices and bodies have been co-opted, and used as playgrounds and battlefields for far too long.

Maybe a more appropriate analogy would have been that there, in the darkness, the hymen languishes, like a princess in a high tower, awaiting our unified, knightly presence to save her from the evil wizards of penis.

By comparison of course, the penis is just a tool of power, conquest and domination that speaks only for ITself–an abomination, an anomaly that is in stark contradiction to the vaginal non-linear plans and purposes of women really, and it should be cut out of the equation in favor of new laws that over-ride the old laws that are so focused on vaginas, and hymens.

Women are statistically smarter than men, did you know that, and much better suited to pass laws that affect the hymen, laws that can protect it, or at least break it into the world more gently–not merely marketing it in a single act of ‘do or die’ linear thinking based religious ceremony.

And of course, accepting that, lends women a strong, united voice–and I used the medical term vagina up there deliberately to point out that men are really just penises as well–always thinking with the wrong head, while women think about the longer, wider picture; united in their thoughts, with all other women for the benefit of all society at all times.

Where did humans get the idea that they were better than other animals. When it comes to sex issues the bonobos have it all over us. They have lots of sex and any babies are raised by their mothers and supported by the rest of the group.

So much of religious morals are about property more than anything else. Someone named something like Jesus tried to change some of this thinking and got nailed to a cross for his trouble. The “moral” of that story is – don’t mess with property.

What a load of twaddle. I am not the “property of all women’ any more than I am the property of men. If you insist that women are smarter then men, then they should be passing all laws, not just ones concerning hymens. Anyway what a rubbish statement. All statements of ‘all women this, all men that…” are equally sexist. You seem to want to put women up on a pedestal and worship them. This is as sexist as it comes as you still disregard individual human autonomy. You just make women your object of worship and pretend that that’s better for them than being an object of hate. It isn’t. Also I am much more than my vagina, and I am happy to know many men that are much more than their penises. Get over Freud already, asswipe.

Oh my! You sound angry. I apologize if anything I said made you feel so badly, and for the fact that what all men have done to you and all women for all these centuries.

I just can’t seem to get my words right. I am not saying that you are talking out of your vagina in a literal sense, or that you are not unique and individual.But you must concede that women’s issues are all the same, and that things affecting American women certainly effect women around the world to the same degree? This is why the feminism must be taught to the young ladies everywhere.

In my era, women were seen as delicate, and fragile; responsible certainly, but they needed to be protected nonetheless from male rapist tendencies, which I did my best to enable.

They were not at all like the aggressive women that we have now, who are empowered at every point to show their great, justified anger! Heavens no. And I worked very very hard to make sure that the men of this generation were contained, controlled and mollified.I even worked very closely withsome of the mothers of second wave feminism, to help steer the dialogue of empowerment.

My area of specialty was psychiatry, of course, and I understand that Freud had issues that did not rectify the situation of dis-empowering women.

But many others in the field picked up where he left off. Have you read Nancy Chodorow’s seminal work “Mothering”? She did for women what Freud et al. did for men. She helped other men to the point where women could voice themselves inter-generationally, in unified tones.

She gave birth to a generation of women who are angry, self righteous, and willing to do something about it. A very progressive work which was shoe-stringed onto earlier movements which were more democratic, and grass roots, and actually, without which there could not have been a larger, movement that was easier to contain and guide, via the righteous anger of a MacKinnon, or a Dworkin.

I no longer practice, that is true, but I am certain that my theories, and practices have affected the world for the better, if this generations women are any example at all. Sexual liberation was not possible, some say, without the input of my colleagues and myself.

I no longer practice, that is true, but I am certain that my theories, and practices have affected the world for the better, if this generations women are any example at all. Sexual liberation was not possible, some say, without the input of my colleagues and myself.

No I’m pretty sure we all could have figured out that we like fucking without you

Sure. Some people are looking in a funhouse mirror called “my interpretation of the bible”. The trouble is, there are thousands of other funhouse mirrors to choose from with each having their own adherents pointing at their own distorted reflections and declaring the other reflections blasphemies…

…and us rationalists trying to convince them to stop looking into mirrors and turn around to see the world itself. It’s not as comforting as looking at some form of yourself in a mirror, and you might not always understand what you are seeing or even see everything, but its the best we can do.

And if we have different interpretations of what we see when we turn around and look at the world itself, WE CAN USE REASON AND EVIDENCE TO FIND OUT WHO IS RIGHT…and resign ourselves to not really knowing until evidence is found.

And if evidence is found that goes against our initial interpretations, we change our minds. It’s called learning.

We can’t learn by staring at ourselves in funhouse mirrors. (The dude in the mirror always agrees with me, even when I’m wrong.)

Whenever Christians argue that “it was a different time then, society was different,” I have to wonder about this god of theirs. Why are we supposed to bow to its whims when it so readily bent itself to the barbarity of the society of the time? If its rules are meant for the prevailing morality of a society, wouldn’t those rules change as society changes?

Or perhaps I’m over-thinking it and this is just their way of avoiding the idea that the mythology they have devoted their lives to is one based around a monster of a god.

You guys are missing an important point. Nowadays we know that πr² but back then they knew pie are round and stuff and junk and shit like that. As Robert Zimmerman told us: “The times they are a changin’.”

Seriously, Slick’s attempt at Sophisticated Theology™ fails miserably. The Abrahamist religions were, and still are, misogynist. Some of the details have changed, but little things like the Catholic priesthood and many flavors of Protestant ministry being only available if one has a penis or the Orthodox Jewish prayer “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Master of the Universe, for not having made me a woman” show misogyny is alive and well.

One thing I’ve noticed about Abrahamist misogyny is it’s always the womens’ fault. Certain Islamic sects require women to wear burkas because seeing too much skin inflames men and turns them into ravening rapists. Is there even the slightest hint that maybe the men should control their libidos? No, the women are forced to stop arousing the poor, oversexed men.

Nope. I can’t place “Church” in any category that is remotely positive.

As one of the callers in the episode above stated, she felt as if she had been “robbed”. Years of her life have been irretrievably wasted on a fantasy. Hell, ask a former Scientologist how they feel after fighting their way out of that crap.

As a parent, I feel that it is my responsibility to recognize dangerous situations based on my experiences and protect my children from harm. That’s why I’m waiting until they’re 18 to decide if they want to use the skydiving reservations they’ll get in their birthday cards.

The chances of jumping out of an airplane and landing safely are high.

Equally high are the chances for a young mind to believe a truckload of bullshit and then waste the remainder of their lives trying to justify obvious contradictions.

I’m not sure how I’ll go about looking this up but surely there’s some passage in there somewhere that references jamming foreign objects in orifices. Makes me wonder how many women were murdered for using a tampon. Or masturbating, for Phillipa’s sake.

I’ve read this in Deuteronomy many times but combined with the subject of the article, something clicked for me. It may be interesting to examine the very common practice of piercing a baby girl’s ears and how it relates to women as property.

The extent of their privilege knows no bounds. The only reason they don’t treat us Gentiles the way they treat their women is that we’d kick them in the junk.

I will never ever ever understand why women let themselves be treated like chattel. But it’s inherent in virtually every religion. The conditioning is strong and they’ve had thousands of years of practice on how to make women think this is their idea.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Well, I grant the “3000 years ago people were fucking primitive and hadn’t discovered yet the idea of human rights” excuse.
People were like that all over the world, no doubt about it.
What I don’t grant is why this should excuse treating the rest of the fucking bullshit like something that has any kind of higher wisdom revealed by a magical being.
You can’t have your cake and eat it. This stuff was either written by humans 5000-2000 years ago, reflecting their wisdom and their values and societies, or they weren’t.
Cherry-picking at its best.

BTW, the issue about lost virginity in women was the thing about pregnancy. The mother was always sure, but before paternity-testing, the father remained a question of faith.
All parents will agree that children cost quite some money before they can earn their own. They were an investment. And you didn’t want to invest in somebody else’s brats.

“Finally, she was not stoned for not being a virgin, but for carrying out a deception in trying to appear as one.”

Which is lying for Jesus, again. Because we all know what happened to women who could not hide their “fault”: Been raped and already promised to another guy? ->stoned
Adultery? ->stoned

I have debated Slick many times, and he has run from most debates with TRUE christians, as he has is NOT a christian at all. He is a trinitarian which are ANTICHRISTIAN. on his lame carm site he tries to convince his gullible followers that other ‘belief systems’ are false, by stating false claims in what they believe. They believe nothing like what he claims.

Do not think anything this fool believes is to do with christian beliefs..as it is far from christianity.

One part of it that’s ridiculous is how christians are always so obsessed with objective morality/absolute moral authority, etc.., but then their only answer for “why was ‘god’ such a dick before” is moral relativism… “it was ok then because that was a different time, and you can’t apply our current standards to that time”. why the F*** not? especially when you claim to have an absolute/objective moral system…